The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose(22)

One of the most memorable examples of the dangers of allowing material achievement to dictate self-worth is the story of author Sarah Ban Breathnach. I’ve said for years that Sarah’s best-selling book Simple Abundance is the reason I started keeping a gratitude journal; it changed the way I moved through the world. Simple Abundance sold seven million copies, and before she knew it, Sarah was a multimillionaire. As a bonafide publishing superstar, she hired nine assistants, brought home eight pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes in one trip, and bought the actual chapel once owned by Sir Isaac Newton. But fifteen years later Sarah joined me for a moving conversation in which she courageously shared the story of how she lost it all—and what she eventually gained in return.

What I learned from Sarah and so many others is that the way people handle money reflects the way they see themselves. Many times when people win the lottery and experience a windfall, they don’t see themselves as worthy of their newfound riches. They wind up spending on possessions to create an idea of self-worth. When you’ve become blinded by the status symbols, it’s easy to lose sight of the unique gifts only you can offer the world.

What I know for sure is that no matter how much wealth you come to possess, everything passes and changes with time. What is real, what is forever, is who you are and what you are meant to share with the world.

That is your true treasure.

—Oprah





CICELY TYSON


When I read a script, either my skin tingles, or my stomach churns. It’s that simple. If my skin tingles I know it’s something I must do. If my stomach churns I know it is something I cannot do. I have learned something from every single character that I’ve played. Something emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically true. I’ve never done a job just for money. I could not do anything that would not enhance humanity, especially for women.

It’s so easy when the money is flashed before you to allow that to govern your choices. But it’s more important to me to have peace of mind, body, and soul than to have all of the riches. When I put my head on my pillow at night I don’t require a drug, alcohol, or anything else. Just fatigue.





MICHAEL BERNARD BECKWITH


MICHAEL BERNARD BECKWITH: Once you release your grasp, then you give up your resistance, and then that which is for you will come to you.

OPRAH: Aha. That’s the aha moment. Because when you want it, want it, want it, it doesn’t show up.

MICHAEL: Yes. Your message to the Universe at that moment is, I want it I want it I want it I want it, which is translating into, I don’t have it I don’t have it I don’t have it, so you can’t receive it.

OPRAH: So you end up blocking your own blessing in that way.

MICHAEL: Totally.





LYNNE TWIST


LYNNE TWIST: I’ve learned a great deal from the people I used to call poor and the people I used to call rich. And now I just realize we’re all whole and complete people living in the ebb and flow of financial circumstances that change all the time and do not define us.

OPRAH: I thought it was interesting how you say we question everything else. We question race, religion, other life circumstances. But money—we just give it the power.

LYNNE: It’s not that we have it. It has us. And we’ve assigned it more power than human life. More power than the natural world. More power than our relationships with each other. And we all know that’s not true. But we live as if money’s more important than anything else. And it cripples us. It gives us tremendous anxiety and suffering. Somehow we drop this wonderful sense of value and worth and love and relationship that we have in the rest of life and we become irritable and competitive and greedy. There is so much suffering in this world in people’s relationship with money. There’s lying. There are things people wish they had never done. Things they didn’t do that they wish they had done. You know, everybody has baggage.

OPRAH: Because of the silent power of money. That’s what you call it.

LYNNE: Yes, we just think it will resolve everything. Everybody thinks, Well, if I just had 30 percent more, everything would be fine. But 30 percent ago, it wasn’t fine. So 30 percent more won’t really do it. Because when you get there, you want 30 percent more. We’re just completely addicted in a society that values money above all else. And it’s hurtful. It wounds us.

OPRAH: So in order to break that scarcity myth, that belief that there’s not enough, you say we need to live in the place of sufficiency.

LYNNE: Yes. Sufficiency is a place of wholeness and completeness and deep understanding of who we are. And it’s almost impossible to get to enough-ness or sufficiencies in a world that exalts what I call the “myth of scarcity”—which is a mind-set, an unconscious, unexamined set of assumptions of “not enough.” There’s not enough time. There’s not enough money. There’s not enough love. There are not enough vacations. There’s not enough sex. There’s not enough this. There’s not enough that. And every meeting, every conversation, every lunch, every dinner, every everything is about what we don’t have enough of. It’s the siren song of a consumer culture. It’s not just about money. It dribbles over into every aspect of life.

OPRAH: Everything.

LYNNE: Yes. It’s not just there is not enough, it’s not enough. We’re not enough. I’m not enough. And that deficit relationship with ourselves is the source of so much of our suffering. It comes from this unconscious, unexamined mind-set I call “scarcity,” which has made up these myths. There is not enough to go around. And someone somewhere is always going to be left out.